Nintendo Wiki:How to write a character article
This guide is focused on how to create a Character Article. Keep in mind that this guide is only there to help you organize character articles. Some articles cannot follow this model for various reasons. The scope of the article may be too small to have every sections shown in this guide or it may be too huge in its scope to be held to traditional article standards. The Mario article for example is forced to take shortcuts because listing every single ones of Mario's appearances in detail would make the article ridiculously long. These two instances are very specific and in most cases this guide should be what you want to follow to make character articles. Templates Every character articles should be started by two templates. These templates come before any kind of text and are mendatory to make your article clear to read. They must be placed in the order they are featured in this section. Head The Head template is a very handy template that inform you on the nature of the article before you even have to start reading. It should be at the top of every article, the only exception being meta articles like this guide, the templates and pretty much every articles that are here to facilitate the navigation through the website. The bullet points bellow will go over what you should write next to each = signs seen above when you are writing a character article. *type = Character This is here to define what the nature of your article is. Since you probably want to write an article about characters if you are reading this guide, the only thing you should write next to this field is "Character" *quote = It's a me Mario! The quote field is for any quotes related to the character that are emblematic enough to be put at the start of the article. It must be written without quotation marks because the template will add them automatically. The quote will appear like that: "It's a me Mario!" in the actual article. *speaker = Mario The speaker is simply the one who uttered the quote. In most case the speaker is the character feat *quotesource = Mario series The origin of the quote. Usually a single game, it can be extended to the whole series when it is a character's catchphrase like in this case. It must be written like shown above. Adding a link will look like that: "Mario series". *stub = x The stub field is a switch. If the article is lackluster compared to what it could be then add an "x" in the field and it will automatically be marked as a stub, which means that people will know that the article is incomplete and can help make it better. If the article is in a state where it is not complete but is far from just a few lines, leave the field empty. *featured = x This field is a switch. By adding a "x" in it you indicate that it is an article that was featured in the front page of the wiki in the past. In most instances, only admins and other high-ranking members of the wiki add them because they are the ones who take care of anything related to the featured systems. If you are just trying to make a new article, this is irrelevant to you. *protected = x Is a switch that is there to show the level of protection of the article. Usually reserved to the staff. Is irrelevant in the creation of new articles and should be left blank. *class = A The class field refers to level of quality of the article. It is rated from E to A (X also exist). For more details on the matter, check this guide. *unreleased = x This is a switch that add a special class called U to the article. This only concern game and product articles and as such the field should be left blank in a character article. *for = x Certain characters share names with other characters. This is why we have disambiguation pages when a lot of characters from different series share the same name. The "for" field is a switch that is used to enable a series of other fields that allow you to clear the confusion of a potential reader by redirecting him on the disambiguation page. *for1 = other uses for 1 is there to indicate what the link you are adding to the Head is supposed to be. In most case, this should redirect to a disambig page so simply using "other uses" should be enough. *for2 = Kirby (disambiguation) This is the link you are supposed to redirect the readers to. The link should be written like this: Kirby (disambiguation). Including a link will result in this: Kirby (disambiguation). *for3 = Kirby series For3 is here to allow you to include a second link to explain the topic more in detail. This is rarely used but in the case of Kirby, you could have a link redirecting to the disambig page and the Kirby series page to give the readers more infos on what Kirby is. Like with for 2, you should write it like above in the field unless you want to end up with that: Kirby series. Example This is an example of what your template should look like. Like said above some fields are irrelevant for a character article or if you are not a member of the staff. As source code: VG Character VG Character is the template used to display basic informations on the character you want to write an article about. It is displayed next to the introduction of the article. It should always be present as it serves as the main source of information for anyone who search general information on the character. *name = Donkey Kong The name field is used to remove the specifications in the name of certain characters that share the same name as other characters. The Donkey Kong article for example is labeled "Donkey Kong (character)" to distinguish it from the other Donkey Kong articles like the game. By adding Donkey Kong to the field we remove the part in parentheses from the top of the template and it look way cleaner. *gender = Male Refers to the gender of the character. If there is none because the character is a robot for example (R.O.B. is a good example) then add genderless in the field. *genderless reason = Machine Give the reason why the character is genderless. Only needed when "genderless" is typed in the gender field. * image = It is one of the most important part of the article, an image of the character help the reader understand who is the character you are writing about. You can include an image by code like I did above. It doesn't work here because I added something that prevent code from working. If you just copied what is after the image field, you would get a working DK image. You can also add an image by using the option on the right when you are editing, which is way quicker if you have the name of the image. If you include an image in the VG Character template make sure to add the "|center|200px" part after the name of the image file. center is here to make your image centered in the template. It should replace "thumb" in the VG Character template or else your image may be off to the side. 200px is a size I give you as a recomandation. You can use 250px instead but more than that may start to mess up how your article looks. *caption = Donkey Kong as seen in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. A basic description of the image. I recommend including the name of the game from where the image is taken. *series = Donkey Kong series Simply the series from which the character came from. *species = Kong The species of the character. Can be as basic as real life species or made up species like the Kongs for Donkey. *Age = The canonical age of the character. If unknown, the field should be left blank like in the case of our ape friend. *class = Useful for characters that are from RPG series like the Fire Emblem characters that have all a specific class. Can be left blank if unneeded. *firstgame = Donkey Kong (video game) The first game the character was featured in. *creator = Shigeru Miyamoto The creator of the character. It is usually the studio that made his first game but in special case like DK, it can be an individual if said individual is known to be the sole creator of the character. *created = 1981 The year of the creation of the character. Supposed to be the year of their first game's release. Even if characters have been shown in promotional materials before the year of release, we consider their first game's release year as their debut as a character. *artist = Shigeru Miyamoto The designer of the character. In this case its the same person as the creator. It must be left blank if no one is known to have designed the character aside from the art team. *language All the remaining fields are for the voice actors in different languages. The basic "voiceactor" is for English voice actors. All the other fields are there only if there is other language dubs. *Gallery and Quotes The gallery and quote links found at the bottom of the templates are redirecting to custom quote and gallery pages. This is where all the images not used in the article and the other quotes should go. Example This is what a completed VG Character looks like. This is still based on our Donkey Kong example. As source code: Introduction The introduction is the short text found under the templates and above the sections. Its goal is to give general informations about the characters. This should only include important informations regarding the character, if the information seems too trivial to present your character, it probably belongs in another section. To start off, the name of the character should be near the beginning of the article and written like that. To do that you can use this code: Link If the character has multiple names or a nickname that is more commonly used, both should be highlighted. In this scenario, your first sentence should look like this: "Ganondorf also known as Ganon is a major character in the The Legend of Zelda series". if the character is a recurring character like Ganondorf, you can mention that he is a character relevant to the whole series or has had multiple appearances in various games like Super Smash Bros. and Hyrule Warriors in Ganondorf's case. If he is not then you should probably mention the game he is from instead of the whole series. For example: "Ezlo is a major character in The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. After that, you should write a bit about what is the character's general role in the game/series. After the bit about his character's role, you should add mentions of the character's most notable appearances outside of their series, like Smash Bros., at the end of the introduction. Sections Sections are where the meat of the article is. They are comprised of everything concerning the character. Sections are defined by a certain number of = from both sides of the intended name of the section in the source code. two = at each side is the highest possible section in the hierarchy of an article. Sections with three = will be subordinated to the two = section. The same goes for sections with four and five =. Sections are useful to facilitate the navigation in the article and should always be featured in your article for the sake of clarity. Different sections I will now list all the sections that should be in a complete character article in order. If the character has not enough information to work with to create some sections, they can be ignored. *Personality The personality section is there to be a summary of the personality of the character. It should generally be first in an article to give the reader a feel of the character. It is generally one of the category featured on the more complete articles. *History The history section is the character's personal story in their franchise. It is generally limited to their roles in their games. Cameos and roles in other franchises like Smash Bros. usually don't belong in this section. In certain cases like Mario, this section also serves as a list of the character's appearances within his own series. This is a particular case since the large scope pages like these cannot hold that much information in the form of categories. *Series The series sections are there for characters that made multiple appearances in various series. To come back to our Ganondorf example, his article can have three of those. One for Zelda, one for Hyrule Warriors and one for Smmash with each games he appear in as subordinate. Series where characters have made a single appearance in usually don't have their own series section and should all be subordinate to the "Other Appearances" section. *Trivia The trivia section is only constituted of bullet points that don't fit anywhere else. It is generally bellow every other sections. Navboxes Navboxes are a special type of template usually found after every sections that serves as a redirect to other articles related to the one you are currently writing. There is no specific navboxes you should add to general articles. They generally are only featured on very specific articles. They will probably not matter immediately when you start editing but you should learn to recognize a navbox when you see one. This is what a Navbox looks like: In this case it is a template that links to every single rare Blades in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It should fittingly be found at the bottom of every article listed in the template. This is what you have to keep in mind when using a navbox: *It is precise in its scope *It is made specifically to link certain articles together. *It should be at the bottom of every concerned article. Category:Nintendo Wiki guides